Through the lens of Industry Experts

In Talks with Debashish Ghosh (He/Him)

Senior Vice President & Country HR Head, Berkadia India

1. Based on your experience, what do you think are some of the factors that contribute to workplace evils?

Evil is a strong word, but I understand why it is used in the workplace At times, there are things done in the workplace that leave a very deep and negative impact on the minds of people. Especially when you experience toxic behaviour at the beginning of your career in an organization. Examples of those could be being very rude or disrespectful to colleagues, favouritism, any form of discrimination, exclusion, harassment, intimidation, bias etc. Unfortunately, the list can be longer. Now to answer your specific question, as to what are the things that contribute to workplace evils - I think there are three things

One is the lack of self-awareness on the part of the individual. All of us, whether we agree or disagree, have unconscious biases Many studies on behavioural science confirm this And those unconscious biases are very hard to get rid of. And those biases reflect on our behaviours, actions, and decisions. The only way to work around those is to be aware of those biases and be conscious of them That's the first one

The second one is the lack of organizational awareness. The lack of awareness of organizational culture is something that can also lead to toxic behaviour. Organizations should define acceptable and unacceptable behaviours and actions clearly, in alignment with their culture. If it fails to do that, then despite the intentions, he or she would end up engaging in wrong behaviours. Therefore, the lack of awareness of the culture is also contributing to those toxic behaviours

The third reason is the lack of appropriate and visible action taken against toxic behaviours. When we see or experience people engaging in toxic behaviour and engaging in evil practices, we must take appropriate and immediate action and make it visible, so that everybody is aware that there is zero tolerance towards such behaviour

So, in a nutshell, lack of self-awareness, lack of organizational awareness and lack of appropriate and visible action contribute towards workplace evils. But one very important thing about our mindset is the word “evil”, I don't think that people who engage in such activities are evil. They are not evil. What they are doing is evil.

It is very important to distinguish between the two Only then we can work towards addressing those workplace evils. So don't fix the person but fix the problem. That is the long-term solution.

2. What did you do differently to minimize these workplace evils?

In my experience, there are 2 to 3 things that are really important. One is building self-awareness in people by helping them recognize their biases, both conscious and unconscious. There are tools, techniques and methods that can help us be more conscious of our biases. That is something I have always done or helped people do at the workplace

Second, building an organizational culture which has zero tolerance towards any toxic behaviour. We must take immediate action against the perpetrators, irrespective of his/her position, level, or importance. Nothing and no one is more important than organisational culture.

Third, it’s very important to check for cultural fit during hiring. A lot of these issues can be nipped in the bud, if the organization has a strong hiring process where it can evaluate the culture fitment of the candidate right at the beginning, no matter how qualified or how experienced that candidate is. There are a lot of ways within the hiring process which help us ask the right question to determine whether the person would fit the organizational culture or not.

3. So, while hiring, what would you do differently or what would you ask the candidate in order to not hire such candidates?

I always ask a lot of situational questions to understand how the candidate makes decisions. Let me share an example. I ask the candidate, “You are at risk of meeting your quarterly goals for your organization. But you have an opportunity to sell a product to a client that might be in his best long-term interests. However, your supervisor insists that you make that sale. He obviously impacts your promotion, which you have been expecting. Listening to your supervisor would also mean that your team would have to stretch long hours What will you do in this situation”? If the candidate says that he/she would do anything to make my company meet its target, that will give me a message that the candidate is not the right fit While he could impact the organization’s financial situation positively in the short term, he would leave a negative impact on his colleagues. More importantly, it’s not in the best long-term interest of his customer. He might make his numbers that quarter, but in the long term, he would lose talented people and end up losing lots of customers

4. What are your views about gendered leadership? Why do we find fewer women working at higher levels of management and more at lower levels? Is it a skills - gap or a systematic unconscious bias? What can we do to have a higher representation of women?

The good news is gender representation in the workplace is getting better. We continue to see an increasing number of women in leadership positions. But I am not happy with the pace at which they are growing. It is definitely not a skill gap or a competency gap. All human beings are gifted in different ways.

You asked if there is a systematic bias. I don't think so, and I speak from my own experience of 2 decades of working in both MNCs and Indian conglomerates At least, not a conscious systematic bias. I am speaking from my own experience of two decades. I have seen that people of all genders are paid equally, by and large, have fair and transparent opportunities to grow, and are treated in the same respectful manner. Now the question is, is there a systematic unconscious bias? That is very hard to say because, by design, it is unconscious.

Organizations are everyone’s favourite punching bag. We all love to hate them when it comes to gender diversity. However, blaming only organizations is making things too simplistic. We must also look at the big picture.

As a student of sociology and social psychology, I can tell you that there are deeper reasons behind the lack of wider representation of women in the workplace It’s not just an organizational issue There are societal factors contributing to this situation. Indian society still considers women as primary caregivers, caretakers and nurturers of the family. So, invariably, the career of women gets impacted as they relocate to different places with their spouses and give up their jobs, take career breaks to start a family, and take a career break to nurse an ailing family member There are many such reasons why women actually don't end up working for a longer period than they should And one can only grow and get to a leadership position when you have actually spent the time. Let me share something interesting, something that not many people are aware of. Only 19% of Indian women are employed today. That number is much worse than that of our neighbours Bangladesh and Pakistan, who have much weaker economies, and where women are less educated than their Indian counterparts. Ironical, but true And that’s the fundamental issue Unless we change something in our society, and we help women employees or women stay in a company for a longer time, we would not see the difference in gender representation in the workplace.

From the organization’s perspective, they can take a few initiatives:

A) Openness to hybrid work. This will ensure that if a woman employee is relocating to a different place due to family reasons, she can still work from t branch offices. A few organizations are also offering complete remote work.

B) We have to identify roles and help women to get back to work after a break We should identify roles for employees with career breaks, and reach out to them proactively.

C) Design a support system within the organization where women employees can have a guide, a coach, and a mentor. Identify role models of senior people within the organization who can do all the coaching and mentoring. Build a community. A lot of women face similar issues, and when they have a community or a support system, they tend to benefit from each other and, therefore, they stay for a longer time

5. Do you think it will be even more difficult for employees from the LGBTQIA+ community and for people with disabilities to contribute to organizational goals and get recognised for the same?

This is more of a yes or no question. If you have hired employees from the LGBTQIA+ community and people with a disability just to make your diversity number look good, then things will not work. They cannot be just bullet points in your presentation to the client. You cannot be hiring for diversity because many others are doing the same. Your purpose cannot be dictated by external factors. It must be your own, internal-focused. A lot of people ask me how to build a business case of diversity and inclusion in an organization. I just tell them it is the business case of humanity! Why do you need a business case for humanity? The moment you start treating everyone for who they are, make them feel belonged; they will be able to contribute to your organization’s goals.

6. Is there any quick mental assessment to understand the presence of workplace evils in any organization? What should we look out for?

I don't think there is a mental assessment. In fact, even if there was one, I would probably not want to do that. What I want is to really see tangible behaviours, behaviours that are observed, that are demonstrated in workplaces day to day. I would not try to second guess people by having a mental assessment. I believe that observing behaviours is the best assessment of workplace evils

There are two ways of doing it First, watch out for those bad and toxic behaviours If somebody is trying to intimidate somebody, is not open to ideas, or is very bossy and rude, these are the telltale signs. These are easily observable. As I mentioned earlier, there should be zero tolerance for such behaviours. Take appropriate action, and take them immediately.

However, there is one thing that works even better than punishing bad behaviours. And that is – to look intentionally for good behaviour in people. Watch out for examples of people who are the opposite image of someone with toxic behaviour

If you look with intentionality, you will find many In organizations, a few instances of toxic behaviours can overshadow many instances of good ones. The good news gets buried under the bad news. So, if you ask me I always look for good behaviour, a good story, a good incident, and a good example for people who exhibit appropriate behaviour at the workplace day in and day out no matter what. It’s important to make them heroes, make them poster boys and girls, and I talk about them publicly

Fundamentally, there are two ways to motivate human behaviour. One is punishment and the other is the reward. The carrot and stick approach. I believe the carrot works a lot better than the stick. The stick approach fixes the issue in the short term. But when you give a carrot, when you really identify or recognize good behaviour, you build a long-term culture. So not a mental assessment - I think identifying the right people and rewarding and recognizing them publicly works more

7. At an individual level, what strategies should we use, to minimize workplace evils and also be effective?

There are a couple of things.

First, we must be aware of our unconscious bias. It’s not easy and it comes with a lot of self-reflection and introspection. It comes with being totally aware of how you make your decisions and choices, and what impact your decisions have on others. You must be aware of what situations you are most susceptible to and vulnerable to. For example, your biases might be very strong during the interview process, or while dealing with someone of a different gender. So, whether we admit it or not, all of us have biases. But being aware of those helps us make fewer mistakes.

Second, one must be open to feedback. Whenever you are unsure about something, or any specific areas where you think you are more prone to biases, take a step back. Don’t take a decision immediately. Talk to someone and bounce off that thought or idea with that person. Once that happens, you might have a different view, and you might be able to change your mind and decision. This can minimize some of the individual biases that we have, and obviously, that will help us to have a better life as a whole.

1. During the pandemic, everyone in the corporate sector faced new challenges. Do you think it affected the workplace negatively and gave rise to any workplace evils?

Yes, it did and none of us, to be honest, were prepared for something like this, either in our personal spaces or professional spaces. The pandemic impacted everyone's life whether it comes to health and well-being, income or other different aspects of life. These changes in people’s lives reflected in the workplace. Additionally in the workplace, we were not ready for this. Working from home was never usual, so people just moved in without a home office set up, and lots of people didn’t have enough space to work Many people felt not equipped for this whole change mentally and in terms of logistics

I think all of this created a lot of chaos. Challenges that are posed by virtual inclusion became a key issue, especially because even though the pandemic is over not all of us have gone back to work full-time So even though we have learned a lot about virtual inclusion there's so much still which can't be achieved. For example, when someone on the other side of the phone call is upset it is quite difficult to understand and makes me think that things would have been slightly different if we were in the office I think it's much easier to process the emotions of people we are interacting with if we are in the same room. Also, another classic example isimagine 200 people sitting in a room for a workshop and the facilitator finds it difficult to engage introverts Now it even becomes harder when it is a virtual session. I’m not saying it’s impossible to overcome the challenges of virtual inclusion but we are still learning in this space which means that we're still dealing with some of those evils in the workplace